1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and method. In particular, the present invention provides a system and method for providing a transient dictionary that travels with an original electronic document.
2. Description of Related Art
When creating a document using a word processing program, such as the Lotus WordPro™ word processing program, available from International Business Machines Corporation, or the Microsoft Word™ word processing program, available from Microsoft Corporation, it is often the case that the user may make use of terms, acronyms, and the like, that may not be known to all potential readers of the document. For example, when generating a technical document, it is often the case that acronyms or terms are used that are specific to a particular project being described in the technical document. Moreover, many terms and acronyms may have multiple different meanings depending upon the context in which they are used, however it may sometimes be difficult to discern the particular meaning from the context.
In order to address this situation, and other situations, such as translation of documents into different languages, electronic or machine-readable dictionaries have been developed for use in providing meaning to these uncommon terms, acronyms, and the like. Electronic dictionaries are widely used in computer systems. There are many kinds of electronic dictionaries, such as monolingual, bilingual, multilingual, bi-directional, and the like. An electronic dictionary typically comprises words in one or more languages and corresponding translations in one or more languages.
The purpose of an electronic dictionary is to translate meanings of words, that is, to explain a word (hereafter, “a word” means a word or a word group) by using a plurality of words with similar meanings. Therefore, an electronic dictionary naturally provides a wide range of information about words related to a specific concept.
Examples of electronic or machine-readable dictionaries and computer systems that make use of these dictionaries may be found in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0153311 entitled “Building Concept Knowledge from Machine-Readable Dictionary,” published Aug. 5, 2004, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0148597 entitled “System for Optimizing Distribution of Information Employing a Universal Dictionary,” published Jul. 29, 2004, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0148381 entitled “Dictionary Updating System, Updating Processing Server, Terminal, Control Method, Program and Recording Medium,” published Jul. 29, 2004, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
While these electronic dictionaries provide a mechanism for associating meaning to terms used in an electronic document, they are tied to the particular computer system in which they are residing. That is, one computer system may have a different electronic dictionary from that of another computer system and, as a result, terms which may have dictionary entries in one electronic dictionary may not have entries in another electronic dictionary on another computer system. As a result, the problems of the user not understanding the terms used in an electronic document may persist because the user's electronic dictionary does not have the necessary entries to provide meaning to these terms.
In some implementations of electronic dictionaries, such as in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0148597, a universal electronic dictionary is used with all computer systems such that every computer system has the same electronic dictionary. While this may address the problem of different computer systems having different electronic dictionaries, the terms that may be given meaning using the universal electronic dictionary are limited to only those that are present in every computer system's universal electronic dictionary. Thus, an author of an electronic document cannot generate a document using a term that is not supported in the universal electronic dictionary and expect to have every potential reader of the electronic document understand the term. In view of the above, it would be beneficial to have a system and method that provides an ability to provide an electronic dictionary entry for uncommon terms in an electronic document which ensures that all potential readers of the electronic document will have access to the electronic dictionary entry.